The Cathedral of the High Plains

A Much Needed Break!

Last week I was driving home from Vegas. I drove from Vegas to Denver on the first leg (about 12 hours) and planned to drive through Kansas the following day (about 8 hours). While I was in Colorado my wife and I were on the phone discussing my plans,

Sarah:“Take your time tomorrow, have fun and take some pictures!”

Me: “Are you kidding, I am just going to drive straight home… there is absolutely nothing to see in Kansas on I-70”

Boy was I wrong!

I made a pit stop in Victoria, Kansas after several hours of driving. At the gas station I saw a sign for the “Cathedral of the High Plains”. I thought to myself, “there is no way there is a cool Cathedral here, its the middle of nowhere” (sorry to those who live in Victoria, but really there is nothing out there!)

I asked the gas station attendant if the cathedral was open as he handed me my change for the Unsweetened Tea I had purchased.

Attendant: “1, 2, 3 hundred dollars. It sure is open, go check it out.” he said with a smile as he handed me three one dollar bills.

I decided to check it out as it was only a mile or so from I-70. I ended up spending nearly an hour and a half there. It was gorgeous. I was bouncing back and forth from the pews to my camera paying my respects to the alter and trying to capture its beauty in my camera.

Vertorama Style

When I am in these gorgeous cathedrals I cannot help but take some Vertoramas (vertical panoramas). These offer such awesome perspectives of the entire room. They enable you to capture the glory of a cathedral from the floor to the ceiling. At first it appears odd as you can see every aspect of the room on the same plane. However, when your eyes adjust you realize you are looking at the ceiling, middle ground, and floor on the same image.

Look at this one, you can see the ceiling fan in the room on the top third of the image. I love the perspective it adds.

f.64 Academy and f.64 Elite are the brainchildren of Blake Rudis. While he is a landscape photographer he is most passionate about post-processing images in Photoshop and mentoring others.

For Blake, it is less about the art and more about the process. He dives deep into difficult topics and makes them easy to understand through his outside the box thinking.

8 Comments

Sherol Bose
on September 16, 2014 at 8:44 am

AWESOME! Very cool find. I agree there is noting on I70 even going east, well maybe the used car lots. I love Architecture. Thank you for sharing these images. Now I will need a tutorial on how to do the Vertical pano.

These images were from several HDR images taken at intervals moving from the floor to the ceiling. They were 3 exposures a piece with 5 total HDR images. After I processed them in Photomatix I stitched them together. It is a loooong but fun process!

Hi Blake, i’ve been following you on You Tube (and on the Topaz webinars) for a while but just joined your community here. I have a few questions on the cathedral pictures: i) were you able to use a tripod? In my experience, many churches do not allow you to take pix on a tripod. Handheld is no problem but no tripod inside. This makes it much harder to take three or more bracketed shots with all the details in a church; ii) i’m curious how you process the three HDR exposures on each group of photos before stitching them in photoshop. How do you ensure that the tone mapping will be consistent between all shots?
Thank you for all your work.

I was able to use a tripod. It was an empty church with no one in it. I have been in many churches, some do not allow them for safety reasons. I abide when I am told and assume it is okay when no one is around.

I just process them altogether with the same settings. If I need to fix them later I will.